Radiation therapy has been employed to treat tumorous tissue. In radiation therapy, a high energy beam is applied from an external source towards the patient. The external source, which may be rotating (as in the case for arc therapy), produces a collimated beam of radiation that is directed into the patient to the target site. The dose and placement of the dose must be accurately controlled to ensure that the tumor receives sufficient radiation, and that damage to the surrounding healthy tissue is minimized.
Generally, a radiation treatment plan is determined before the radiation therapy is performed. In some cases, the dose of the radiation treatment plan is also evaluated before the treatment plan is carried out. Such dose evaluation may be performed by comparing a predicted dose of the treatment plan with a portal dose that is obtained based on an evaluation plan. This allows an accurate and precise dosage of radiation to be delivered to a patient.
Sometimes, a radiation treatment plan includes multiple fields. Existing techniques for evaluating doses of such radiation treatment plan involve analyzing each of the fields of the treatment plan. In such techniques, each of the fields of the treatment plan is analyzed manually with the aid of a computer. In particular, the user would manually input parameters to perform a test that compares predicted dose with portal dose. The user then manually analyzes the test result. In some cases, if the same test needs to be run again using different values of the parameters, the user would need to manually change the parameters, and rerun the test. Also, if additional test is needed, the user would again manually input parameters to perform another test to compare the predicted dose with the portal dose. Then the user again manually analyzes the additional test result. Such non-template based dose evaluation approach has been a standard procedure in radiation plan verification.
Applicant of the subject application determines that the standard procedure for performing dose evaluation on multiple fields of a treatment plan is repetitive and time consuming with many steps always being the same. Applicant also determines that manually changing values of the parameters to run the same test using the different parameter values is tedious and inefficient. Applicant therefore determines that it would be desirable to have a more efficient system and method for performing dose evaluation for radiation treatment plan, such as an intensity modulated radiation treatment (IMRT) plan.